Monday, October 31, 2016

For What It's Worth...occasionally issues emerge on which I'd like to comment, but only for one post. Anything more seems to take a step towards that slippery slope and then this issue--which is passing--becomes THE.ONLY.THING.THIS.BLOG.IS.ABOUT.

Thus: TOTISSAT: The Only Time I'll Say Something About This.Fair warning: I have been working on one such post for about two months.Then there's: "OKFIBAT": "OK, Fine, I'll Blog About This." -- for those times when an issue, which once seemed a passing fad, has demonstrated some staying power.Finally, WISWN: What I'm Struggling With Now -- perhaps more self-explanatory, an occasional excursion into theological/spiritual conundrums still challenging us. These pop up all the time.These acronyms will also help categorize this blog's accumulating posts. Can you believe it's been FOUR YEARS already?

That's right, in a hole and still digging. Writing in Commonweal E. J. Dionne, Jr. asserts that it is actually those liberal American Catholics supposedly caught by the Wikileaks release fomenting change within the Church...those are the real good guys. After all, they're the ones who really support Pope Francis. Dionne:

Ironically, a “Spring movement” did arrive in the church—but from the top, with Pope Francis’s election in 2013. Also ironically: Many of the conservative Catholics inclined to denounce the Clinton camp have been critical of Francis—it gives new meaning to the term “more Catholic than the pope”—while more liberal Catholics like Podesta have championed him.

and then in conclusion:

The factual bottom line is that in private correspondence, the two Clinton campaign officials said nothing anti-Catholic, although they did not reproach the critical comments of their friends.

As a progressive Catholic myself, here are the lessons I draw.

Liberals are free to criticize religion in general or particular religions, but they should resist casual put-downs of Catholics and Christians that they’d condemn if they were directed at other faiths.

Conservatives in the Catholic hierarchy need to pay attention to Pope Francis and ponder the high costs of tying a church with a rich tradition of social teaching to the right end of politics.

Finally, this episode is part of an ongoing argument among more liberal and more conservative religious people, and it will long outlast this election.

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

So about eighteen months ago I blogged about Indiana and its governor, Mike Pence. In 2010 then U.S. Congressman Pence had been the only Republican, House or Senate, to attend the Faith & Politics Institute's annual Civil Rights Pilgrimage to Birmingham, Montgomery, and Selma, Alabama. I mentioned all this because, at the time, Pence was cast as one-dimensional, cardboard reactionary. I haven't lived in Indiana since 1991, so I am neither a supporter nor critic of Pence. I simply thought the then-descriptions of him were woefully incomplete.Well, since then, obviously, Pence has become Donald Trump's vice-presidential candidate and therein lies the problem.

Friday, October 7, 2016

Blogger note: Just recently this blog took on discrepancies between Tim Kaine's political stances and his affirmation of his Catholic faith. This post, working from material composed earlier this year, provides balance with a critical view of the Trump campaign.Robert Hughes Benson's Lord of the World. Folks, you need to read this book. It matters not that the book was published in 1907, the same year as St. Pius X's Pascendi, five years before the Titanic sank, seven years before Gavrilo Princip shot Archduke Ferdinand, thirty-two years before Hitler invaded Poland. The novel features euthanasia, the loss of religious liberty, anti-Catholicism (because they're two different things), globalization, total war, martyrdom, demagoguery, and the miraculous.Bradley Birzer, author of illuminating studies of Christopher Dawson and Tolkien, earlier this year posted this brief article at The Imaginative Conservative. I myself was reminded about Benson and this particular novel by this Crux article by John Allen, Jr. Both Benedict XVI and Francis have recommended the book. Benson (1868-1914), whose father had been Archbishop of Canterbury, was a celebrity convert and priest. Once quite popular among English-reading Catholics, his reputation has vanished since the Second Vatican Council.Lord of the World follows the parallel trajectories of Father Percy and his doppelganger, Julian Felsenburgh, a senator from Vermont (no, I am not making that up) who is clearly the anti-Christ. Secularism has pushed all religion to the fringes as the masses chose instead this world's pleasures (euthanasia and what amounts to physician-assisted suicide are readily available). Only Rome the city itself resists as it has, through international treaty, become the sole earthly haven for Catholics. Martyrdom awaits any Catholic who dares declare the Faith openly. Meanwhile a worship of divinized earthly powers spreads like wildfire. Amassing this new awakening, and yet remaining above it all, stands Julian Felsenburgh. Traveling across the world at record speeds, Felsenburgh successfully unites the entire planet, save Rome, under one government. Meanwhile, Father Percy sees his clerical friends lose their faith and the Church lose even what little it retains on earth. The impending victory of Felsenburgh's atheist materialism seems complete. The conclusion, though, must be read all the way to its very last words. No spoilers here.(Pic credits: Ave Maria Press & Wikipedia)

Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Shaking off the dust on this blog. My apologies for the lack of output; it's been a very busy time.And right when all the great blogging issues come before us: the election, baseball postseason, Pope Francis' in-air press conferences, football, the start of a new semester...All of that will receive due consideration. This Wall Street Journal op-ed by William McGurn, though, merits a quicker response. Mainly because it lays out clearly, that for all the reasons why Donald Trump is not a fit candidate--let alone acceptable choice--for the Presidency, and all the reasons casting doubt on Hillary Clinton's candidacy, one of the real problems is actually Virginia Senator Tim Caine, Clinton's vice-presidential candidate. Look up "devastating take-down" and you'll find this post.

McGurn:

When he walks onstage Tuesday night for this year’s vice-presidential debate, the junior senator from Virginia will carry with him a résumé that shouts respectability. ...

In sum, Mr. Kaine is a garden variety Catholic Democrat of the early 21st century. In this capacity, the orthodoxies that now define his party and might once have disturbed a practicing Catholic bother him not at all. These include abortion on demand, underwritten with taxpayer dollars.

In some ways Mr. Kaine’s rise represents the yielding of the old pro-choice Catholic Democrat represented by Mario Cuomo—“I am not implying that we should stand by and pretend indifference to whether a woman takes a pregnancy to its conclusion or aborts it” said he at Notre Dame in 1984—to the brave new world where son Andrew Cuomo says that those who oppose abortion “have no place in the state of New York.” Whatever else this is, it marks a comedown from the high hopes of liberal American Catholicism in those heady days before JFK became the first Catholic president.

We have heard this before. Kaine embodies the "Cafeteria Catholic" approach so loved in America: I'll have some of that liturgy, a big serving of spirituality, a sprinkling of Mary, but no thanks, none of that pro-life stuff. I'm trying to cut back. All the while Kaine touts his "Catholic" identity. To which McGurn and everybody else responds: